I like the Internets ... a lot.

November 2008

11/30/2008

When you get off the elevator on the second floor of the Rider Building you see a small plasma display hanging there that typically has a Twitter stream of ETS staff displayed on it. It is cool to see and I often notice people walking by and stopping to read what is visible. It gives an interesting view into some of the activity happening in and around our office.

If you've been to an education technology conference worth its weight then you have probably seen something similar -- someone has set up a Twitter account so people can be followed by the event and their back channel stuff can be displayed live as people move around the event. Good enough and a smart way to get a crowd sourced idea of what is happening at the moment.

I've wanted something that goes beyond just the standard Twitter stream to use at our annual TLT Symposium, but haven't wanted to take the time to build something that aggregates more of the social stuff together -- Tweets, pictures, links, etc. This weekend I stumbled across a new feature by the folks at Brightkite ... they call it The Wall. The Wall is a simple to setup tool that gives you a way to aggregate content posted to the Brightkite network into a very simple full screen view. It gives you the option of using the location of the event as the determining factor -- which is nice, b/c once you check in with Brightkite that you are in a certain place, all your updates are counted ... no need to use a hastag or anything else. You can also choose a search term which I admittedly didn't try out (but plan to) as well as person stream. Take a look below to see what I mean ...

Once it is setup, in my case, I choose to use a location -- State College, PA. When I launched my Wall I was surprised to see activity talking about the Blogs at Penn State from someone I know, but who isn't in my network. It was very cool. It even pulls in pictures posted to Brightkite from people checked in at that location. Have a look ...

This will be a great addition to the Twitter stuff at any event, but the issue still exists of asking people to create a Brightkite account. I think you can join in via texting to the site ... check out the Wall for 16801 and give it a try. But, now think of how cool it could be in a class where you have much more more control over the networks that your students post to. A Wall featuring updates in one spot would be very attractive to help bind community. I'd be interested in hearing other ways this could work. I am very attracted to the mash up of location, community, and content ... I wonder if it works to drive additional context for a community?

Update: BTW, I have 15 invites for Brightkite. If you want one, just leave a comment.

11/24/2008

With all my yelling for openness on campus recently, I am proud to show off some of the open content emerging within our iTunes U space. There are thousands of course podcasts that are still behind the log in wall, but so much great open content is being published every single day. It is really cool to see. If you have iTunes installed and you click this link you'll be taken to our top downloads area to see for yourself.

The one thing I'm not sure we are doing a good job at is exposing this to the teaching community as a resource. I'm not thinking about it as a resource for just posting content, but a resource for linking content into an existing course. A quick browse through the WPSU stuff alone brings to light hundreds of amazing assets that are very well done and could support all sorts of learning needs. If there isn't anything to discover at PSU for you, it may be time to take a look at the content that has been appearing in the overall iTunes U space. Not only is there an excellent selection of open content items from higher education available, but the folks in Cupertino who manage this environment have done an outstanding job bringing open and available content to us from all sorts of sources -- take a look, there are some high quality resources just waiting to be used, mashed, contextualized, and shared.

Back at PSU we are in the midsts of a total redesign of our entire podcasting service -- from the Podcasts at Penn State site to our iTunes U environment. We are consolidating, working to make things more discoverable, and trying to find new ways to encourage the open posting of content. We are hoping to start releasing some of the new stuff around the start of the Spring 2009 semester. With that in mind, we are all ears! What should we be doing to promote this in a wider sense and raise greater awareness on and off campus?

11/23/2008

I got back from an interesting little unconference experience yesterday where Brad Kozlek and I attended the WordCamp ED at George Mason University in Virginia. It might seem strange that a couple of guys working a University wide blogging solution built on MovableType would have the nerve to go and spend the day with other faculty and staff doing the same, but with WordPress as the focus. I was convinced that the trip would be worth it and the discussion would center on the power of open publishing platforms for teaching and learning. I wasn't disappointed. Nearly the entire day focused on the outcomes and practices being realized via a campus wide blogging platform. It was cool to see people giving up a Saturday to get together and talk.

One of the big reasons I wanted to go was to get to finally meet Jim Groom in person. Jim is a passionate educational technologist who runs the Blogs at University of Mary Washington service. His work has been an inspiration to lots of people trying to free learning content across campuses. If you read his blog you know he is really into shattering the status quo and destroying the walls that have captured our institutional content for the last 10 years. Let me just say that his presentation rocked and it pushed Brad and I to spend nearly the entire 4 hour drive back to State College talking about how we are also thinking these thoughts -- and frankly how to push a little harder.

His talk was titled Permanent Revolution and told the story of how important it is that we promote the use of open publishing spaces to save the academy. He told it with the intensity and emotion of a man worthy of the nickname, The Reverend. He makes the claim that the "Notion of the Permanent Revolution" is at the core of what we are trying to do with education -- we need ways to rethink the digital space we are living in and how to take advantage of the affordances inherent in instant publishing. He claims that WordPress is a platform for revolution, but was quick to point to us and say the tools don't matter just the ways we allow them to be used. His assertion is that we must work to liberate student content -- in the LMS/CMS model students must pour it in and then after the course it gets packaged up, archived, deleted, and ultimately becomes inaccessible to the creator. It isolates the contribution. In the blog world, it belongs to the individual and the individual decides how to share it with the community (or the class).

A great talk that I wish was given more time. What I really wanted to do was explore the underlying principles with his talk and walk away from any thoughts of "my platform is better than yours." I think Jim and I were both very interested in talking about affordances of the concept, not of the individual tools. He and I are going to be joining forces with Brian Lamb, D'Arcy Norman, and Alan Levine at ELI in January to present a session on the use of personal publishing tools to drive educational practice ... I can't wait to have the conversation with he and the rest of that crew.

At the end of the day, it was a very worth while trip and one that has me thinking more critically about the notion of openness on our campus -- and how much louder we need to be shouting for its creation.

11/19/2008

I am still taking in the greatness that is hulu.com ... a big media company that has gotten it. This morning I bounced over and saw that they've recently added a new "program" called, Hulu How-To's. Nothing earth shattering -- the typical screencast of how to do things on the site. The thing that is entirely interesting to me is that the three how-to's I saw were all about how to share their content. They teach you how to embed it (with the ability to embed only the parts you want), how to link it, and how to email it. Can you imagine a year ago a big media company teaching you how to redistribute their content?

Update ... here is something I didn't know. Hulu is unavailable outside the US. While I have no interest in supporting Internet filtering I am torn about the notion of perceived progress related to limiting access to content.

Two additional observations:

Several years ago big media started demanding that higher education take action against piracy on our networks. I have to say that I do not blame them doing so. Piracy of music, and more recently movies and software, is illegal and should not be tolerated. I think a lot of people didn't agree with the approaches the big boys utilized and we all wished they saw the value in being more open -- we've all heard both sides of the conversation so no need to rehash. One of the things we all did to help fight illegal file sharing was limit bandwidth on our campuses so students could push fewer bits through our pipes. We don't monitor what gets pushed, we just make sure they aren't using too much. When they do, we are forced to assume it is because they are sharing large media files and we turn off their access for a time. Am I the only one beginning to find it incredibly ironic that some of these same big media folks are now seeing the value in allowing open access to their properties and all of it requires a boatload of bandwidth? I am guessing they will now cry foul about our limiting the very networks they were once so concerned about.

The second observation has to do with Obama's decision to share his Fireside Chats via youtube instead of just radio. I heard some folks on NPR bashing the decision and coming up with a handful of reasons why it is wrong. I'm not so much impressed that he chose youtube as the platform, I am impressed that he decided to do it on a social platform. Youtube allows for feedback, video responses, and the reuse of media via embed tags. Imagine what an amazing open archive these will be as we go forward. Open educational resources at their best.

Lots of chatter across the edu-blogger web the last week or so about the notion of open -- what does it mean, why bother to discuss it, and why should we care. The idea that we (as Institutions) would take the time to debate the value or the process by which we arrive at the notion of openness is complex to say the least. If we value the ideals of the Land Grant Institution (or education in general), then why argue when we can just be open? These are questions we deal with when we talk about the notion of open and they are difficult at best to answer. Tonight I think I found an example that may make sense of some of the conversation.

Most of you already realize Google is hosting images from the Life archive. They are brilliant and it speaks to the amazing power of not only Google, but the Internet in general. I spent only a few minutes today using the special, "source:life" search addition and the results were at once moving and inspirational. The power to see and access such historically significant works of art is nothing short of stunning. I was, for some reason, compelled to look at old Life photos of JFK ... I think it is because I watched an excellent, American Experience episode on PBS last night about the his assassination. The image that struck me can be found here.

Did you look at the link? Did you notice something about the way that I referneced that beautiful and powerful image? I linked to it. I didn't embed it. I linked to it. Maybe I am missing something with the Google/Time archive, but I didn't see anything that asked me to use that photo in my context. I like that the images are accessible but to me, this is an example of what closed now means.

Now, when I do the same thing at Flickr in relation to Barack Obama's campaign photos something very different emerges. You'll notice something significant -- You can see the image below in my context. Powerful imagery with unreal historical significance, within my space telling my story. Where do you see it? Right here from Barack Obama's Flickr page, shared via a Creative Commons license. That to me is openness. Any thoughts?

11/14/2008

I thought I'd share a few quick thoughts on the progress of our Blogs at Penn State project with everyone. We've been at this for quite some time and it is starting to really feel like it is catching on. Measuring a service's success at a place like PSU is tough. Is it measured through the number of users? Is it measured through positive feedback? Perhaps through novel uses of the service? No one can really tell me one way or the other ... so for the Blogs at Penn state, I am using my own metrics -- and they are probably flawed, but that is why I am saying they are my metrics.

If we are measuring success with numbers alone, I am thrilled with the growth this semester! Since the first week of August there have been about 2,700 new blogs created by about 2,900 new users. That is exciting, but the fact that there are now nearly 24,00 entries with about 9,400 comments makes me think people are not only writing themselves, but engaging in the kind of social discourse a platform like this affords. If we're measuring on unique uses, then I am floored -- student and faculty portfolios are springing up, alumni pages are being developed, and departmental websites are coming to life. The uses are nearly unlimited and people are getting it.

For the start of the Spring semester we have a few new ideas to drive greater adoption of the platform. One of the things we've been working on is a new page that is created automatically when a user gets their webspace activated. Every faculty, staff, or student who activates their personal webspace gets 5 GB to do whatever they want with it. At PSU, only about half of the 93,000 students activate their space and only about 25% use it for academic purposes. We think by promoting the service as a web publishing platform suitable for blogs, portfolios, class notes, or really anything we'll see those numbers jump. The new page is beautiful and shares a very simple message -- "Create. Reflect. Connect." It was designed by our webmaster, Audrey Romano, and really begins the effort to tie the service to its affordances.

If you've visited the Blogs at PSU site lately, you will see a striking resemblance. We are working to bring the ideas of web publsihing together under the use of the Movable Type environment. One of the coolest features of the new personal page shown above is a promotional video created by one of our multimedia developers, Zac Zidek. Zac took the text from an old screencast and set it in motion. As far as I am concerned, it is first rate.

So starting this Spring, when a student gets their webspace and visits it for the first time they'll be encouraged to dive in with a single click to "Create. Reflect. Connect." We'll see, but I am vey proud of the team effort on the Blogs at PSU -- from across lots of our organizations. What do you think?

11/09/2008

Finally. The New York Times added a very interesting and eye opening service to its online presence, Times People. Put simply, Times People is a social network inside the Times. For people who spend a portion of their day at the site, this is a wonderful addition. For people who live and die by their RSS reader, this may be the kind of thing that could change news reading habits. It serves as a simple, yet elegant, recommendation managment tool for people you know who read the Times. Each article has a "recommned" link that takes the title and link to the article and drops it into a "drawer" that can be shown and hidden from the top of the Times website. I am currently using it with my wife to see how it works -- I am really interested in seeing what this looks like with a bunch of people sharing.

"Times People is a social network for Times readers. But it's not a social network like Facebook or MySpace  you won't have Times friends, and it won't get you Times dates. Instead, you'll assemble a network of Times readers. Then you'll be able to share interesting things on NYTimes.com with others in the network. For example, when you recommend an article, comment on a blog post, or rate a movie or restaurant, these activities will become visible to other Times People users in a special toolbar at the top of every NYTimes.com page. You'll also have a personal page that keeps track of your Times People activities and lets you browse your network of readers."

Old media is working their asses off to create innovation in a very stale and static place. I doubt this does much for the circulation numbers for the Times, but I can assume that if it catches on it could drastically increase page impressions ... and that, of course, could very positively impact advertising revenue.

No matter how you slice it up, there is a gem of an idea in this little addition that we should think about. Imagine that type of functionality replacing a big portion of the course management system. Essentially a CMS that follows you around and that you can collect evidence of learning in while you work the web. Clearly there are other social tools that do this kind of thing already, delicious instantly comes to mind, as do instant blogging buttons, and other basic sharing tools. But, I am curious about the potential here to slim down the CMS and have it work for me instead of me working for it -- the current pardigm drives me crazy, I have to log into it and then go outside to read things an instructor has linked to. I just wonder how taking a slightly different approach would change the way students use the web for learning.

Imagine opening your browser and seeing a small to do style toolbar that is populated from across your required learning activities. Hitting these sites triggers a check mark next to the readings/activities assigned to you. Making it a two way street would enable students to tag things for other students to read. One could even tag a writing activity completed in their own blog that would show up in the instructors view of the system. I don't know, maybe I am really reaching, but the idea of having something that looks and feels more bottom up and organic leads me to believe we could see more active engagement online with content. Am I making any sense? Any thoughts? And oh, join the Times People feature and let me know so I can follow your recommendations.

11/06/2008

My friend and colleague, Ken Udas, had asked me earlier in the Summer to contribute to his excellent Terra Incognita blog but I kept blowing deadlines and missing obligations. Ken gave me an extension and has been gracious to allow me to squeeze a guest post in between a few very smart people. I had a good time working up something that was very different than what usually shows up at his site and I hope he isn't too put off by it. My post addresses the changes in big media and their evolving and emerging interest in embracing the social web. It looks at big media and their amazing move into allowing us to embed their property -- legally! It asks what it means for us in higher education and how we should be addressing this move.

I would really appreciate it if you took the time to bounce over to read the post and leave a comment for us to chew on and discuss. Besides, if you are interested in open content and learning then you should be tracking Terra Incognita. Thanks!

11/01/2008

Quick note to say Happy Halloween to everyone! It was a great evening filled with lots of sweets and some perfect time walking the neighborhood with my two little ones. They both had a blast -- even little Max who right up until we walked out the door didn't want to put his Teddy Bear outfit on.

One treat to share is the discovery of a new online music site, LaLa. LaLa is a store and a streaming music site with a wonderful twist -- it allows you to share the tracks you already own back into your online account so you can listen anywhere you have an Internet connection. I tried it today and used the LalaMove application to scan my iTunes library and send up some sort of identification that I own all that music. Doing that unlocks the same collection of songs at the LaLa site. Very, very cool. So, now I don't need to burn CDs of music just to take them to work to listen to. Sorta feels like the RIAA is getting it? No idea, but perhaps.

LaLa is also a store where you can buy online only versions of songs for a dime and downloadable, DRM-free tracks for 89 cents. It even recognizes my Apple DRM tracks, so I can listen to them anywhere, but on my iPhone. No problem. Add in the social components and it is a very sweet treat. Nice little trick!